Lincoln  and  the  Jews 


By 
EMANUEL  HERTZ. 


Delivered  over  WRNY  —  Hotel  Roosevelt,  Sept.  2,    1928 


LINCOLN  ROOM 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


MEMORIAL 

the  Class  of  1901 

founded  by 

HARLAN  HOYT  HORNER 

and 

HENRIETTA  CALHOUN  HORNER 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2012  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign 


http://www.archive.org/details/lincolnjewsOOhert 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


LINCOLN  AND  THE   TEWS 

An  appreciation  of  the  work  of  the  late  Isaac  Markens 


By  EMANUEL  HERTZ 

ITH  the  passing  of  Isaac  Markens  the  other  day,  one 
of  the  closest  students  of  the  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
disappeared  from  the  stage.  He  it  was  who  took  upon  him- 
self the  task  of  delving  into  the  contemporary  newspaper 
comments  and  official  archives  and  to  bring  to  light  as  many 
of  the  contacts  of  Abraham  Lincoln  with  the  Jewish  people 
as  could  be  recovered  and  reclaimed  from  the  old  magazines, 
newspapers,  conversations,  interviews  and  documents,  all  of 
which,  together  with  the  still  surviving  actors  of  the  time, 
were  quickly  disappearing.  Had  it  not  been  for  his  valuable 
brochure  on  "Lincoln  and  the  Jews"  in  which  he  enumerates 
Lincoln's  Jewish  friends  some  of  the  most  valuable  leads 
in  that  most  neglected  phase  of  Lincoln's  life  would  have 
been  forever  lost.  Surely  the  people  who  contributed  so  full 
a  measure  of  men  and  means,  of  money  and  of  Union  preachers 
and  propagandists  deserved  a  better  fate.  Still  no  one  spoke 
a  word  until  Markens  took  up  the  task  and  demonstrated  that 
we,  the  Jewish  people,  too,  stood  by  the  Union — when  that 
last  great  hope  of  government  by  the  people  was  on  trial. 
Until  Markens  came  the  only  prominent  Jewish  Civil  War 
name  known  was  that  of  Judah  P.  Benjamin,  the  Senator 
from  Louisiana  —  sometimes  called  the  brains  of  the  Con- 
federate Cabinet — and  he  was  with  the  enemies  of  the  Union. 
Markens  compiled  some  of  the  more  important  events,  when 
the  Jewish   soldier   or      private   citizen   came   in   contact   with 


Lincoln — and  demonstrated  once  again  that  Lincoln  knew  no 
distinction  betwen  creeds  or  classes — he  was  indeed  Father 
Abraham  to  all  who  made  up  the  great  country  whose  destinies 
were  in  his  strong  but  weary  hands. 

Markens  was  particularly  fortunate  in  listing  and  bringing 
from  obscurity  and  quoting  the  Jewish  friends  and  spokesmen 
of  Lincoln  in  1864  and  1865.  He  has  garnered  almost  a 
complete  list  of  funeral  sermons  delivered  in  the  Synagogues 
throughout  the  land  on  April  16th  and  June  1st  1865,  and 
quotations  from  a  number  now  completely  lost ;  and  in  the 
forty  years  of  his  work  he  gathered  information  about  Lincoln 
from  nooks  and  corners  and  crannies,  from  thousands  of 
newspaper  clippings — carefully  arranged  and  preserved — which 
were  generally  overlooked  by  those  who  prefer  to  evolve  a 
Lincoln  of  their  own  rather  than  go  to  the  fundamental  facts 
which  made  up  that  great  career.  His  instinct  for  novel  facts 
was  almost  uncanny — and  his  proof  is  always  authentic  and 
complete. 

And  so  it  was  that  toward  the  end  of  his  life  he  prepared 
from  his  endless  investigations,  a  formidable  volume,  in  some 
thirty  chapters,  new  incidents  and  recollections,  minor  details 
and  hitherto  unrecorded  events  which  the  ordinary  author 
never  tumbled  upon — but  which  are  indispensable  in  the  col- 
lections of  everything  new  about  Lincoln.  It  was  my  good 
fortune  to  have  read  the  manuscript  but  I  fear  that  his  death 
may  interfere  with  its  publication,  for  age  had  somewhat 
interfered  with  the  diction  and  sequence  of  events  in  this  his 
last  effort,  and  he  had  no  opportunity  to  put  it  in  final  shape 
for  publication. 

He  did  not  belong  to  that  class  of  historical  writers  who 
have  their  work  briefed  for  them  as  did  one  of  the  notable 
biographers  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  whose  book  has  now  gone 

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into  many  editions.  Isaac  Markens  went  to  the  newspaper 
files,  wrote  to  the  people  themselves  who  were  the  actors 
at  the  time  of  the  great  storm  and  stress  period  of  our  counry, 
and  in  this  manner  procured  his  information  from  the  original 
sources. 

His  pamphlet  on  the  Gettysburg  Address  —  "Lincoln's 
Masterpiece"  as  he  called  it — is  as  complete  a  piece  of  historical 
research  as  can  be  found  anywhere  within  the  wide  realms  of 
Lincolniana.  The  article  on  the  case  of  John  Y.  Beal  is  also 
a  very  valuable  production,  definitely  recording  what  was 
undoubtedly  a  miscarriage  of  justice  in  an  embattled  country — 
one  of  the  few  instances  where  Lincoln  refused  to  interfere 
with  the  decision  of  military  tribunals,  in  this  case  presided 
over  by  General  John  A.  Dix.  But  probably  his  best  work 
was  the  gradual  evolution  of  the  picture  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
as  interpreted  and  painted  by  his  own  son,  Robert  T.  Lincoln, 
with  whom  he  was  in  constant  correspondence  and  whose 
complete  confidence  he  had,  and  whom  he  knew  so  well  that 
he  was  never  refused  any  information  asked  for,  nor  access 
to  documents  which  were  refused  and  denied  to  others,  who 
arrogantly  demanded  to  be  permitted  to  pry  into  the  family 
secrets  of  the  Lincoln  family.  In  this  manner  Markens  found 
more  genuine  Lincoln  material  and  really  started  the  work 
of  some  future  historian,  whose  work  ought  to  be  entitled 
"Abraham  Lincoln  As  Interpreted  By  His  Son" — a  work  not 
even  dreamed  of  by  so-called  definitive  historians.  A  work 
which  must  be  done  by  some  one.  Markens  was  a  true  lover 
of  the  great  Emancipator.  Lincoln  was  his  passion,  he  was  his 
hobby,  he  was  his  cloud  by  day  and  pillar  of  fire  by  night  which 
guided  that  industrious  newspaper  man  who  wrote  for  prac- 
tically every  leading  newspaper  of  the  day,  and  who  read  more 
newspapers  in  his  search  for  Lincoln  material  than  any  other 
man  I  ever  met  or  heard  of. 


The  paramount  lesson  of  Markens'  life  which  might  well  be 
heeded  by  the  future  historians  is  this:  Jefferson  Davis,  the 
great  opponent  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and  the  embodiment  of 
the  spirit  of  secession,  has  found  at  the  hands  of  a  prominent 
scholar  and  historian,  Dr.  Dunbar  Rowland,  his  reward  in  a 
definitive  edition  of  his  life,  his  addresses,  his  speeches  and  his 
letters,  as  complete  as  human  effort  can  make  it,  in  ten  volumes 
comprising  about  six  thousand  pages,  indeed,  a  colossal  under- 
taking. It  is  from  that  source  that  every  life  of  Jefferson  Davis 
will  hereafter  have  to  be  drawn.  It  is  from  that  source  that 
every  important  problem  of  the  South,  in  reference  to 
secession,  will  have  to  be  elucidated  and  explained — it  is  in 
this  encyclopaedic  compilation  that  epoch  making  decisions  ot 
Jefferson  Davis  are  explained  and  in  this  great  work  Jefferson 
Davis  is  as  nearly  vindicated  as  he  ever  can  hope  to  be. 

Is  it  not  time  that  at  least  the  same  thing  be  done  for  the 
man  of  the  ages,  the  man  who  saved  our  Union,  the  man  who 
liberated  fowr  million  people,  the  man  who  has  become  the 
model  of  all  succeeding  Presidents,  the  household  divinity  of 
millions  of  people,  both  in  this  country  and  abroad?  Is  it  not 
time  that  Lincoln  be  similarly  documented,  his  epoch  making 
decisions  explained  and  many  of  his  most  important  achieve- 
ments revealed?  Only  in  this  manner  can  we  thoroughly 
appreciate  how  he  successfully  struggled  with  supermen  like 
Lee  and  Jackson  and  Joseph  E.  Johnston  and  Jefferson  Davis, 
and  prevailed.  Must  we  from  this  Southern  encyclopaedia  ot 
Jefferson  Davis  lore  draw  our  explanations  how  the  frontier 
farmer  statesman  out-generalled  the  heroic  leaders  of  the 
South,  at  the  head  of  the  most  perfectly  organized  military 
engine  of  the  century?  Must  we  go  to  the  enemies  of  the 
Union  to  explain  the  success  of  Union  arms,  Union  diplomacy 
and  Union  statesmanship?  We  ask  for  no  comment.  We  ask 
for  the  facts,  for  the  documents,  for  the  letters,  for  the  pardons, 


for  the  cards  he  wrote — those  will  constitute  the  best  monument 
of  our  War  President,  for  his  monuments  of  bronze  and 
marble  may  crumble — his  spoken  and  written  word — never. 

Is  it  not  time,  I  submit,  that  a  similar  definitive  collection  of 
speeches,  works  and  utterances  should  be  collected  and  that  all 
documents  be  called  from  their  hiding  places,  that  all  patriotic 
men  and  women  who  have  such  documents — and  there  are 
many  outstanding — be  asked  to  contribute  to  the  common 
foundations  of  a  definitive  collection  of  the  life,  the  works, 
the  letters,  particularly  the  letters,  where  his  soul  was  portrayed 
from  so  many  different  angles  and  which  disclose  so  many 
different  phases — that  all  of  these  be  collected,  be  published, 
so  that  all  may  have  them  at  a  nominal  price?  Congress 
prints  thousands  of  volumes  on  almost  every  topic  including 
the  flora,  the  fauna,  the  geodesic  conditions  of  the  country 
in  which  the  few  are  interested.  Why  not  this,  marvelous 
career,  the  epic  of  America,  the  hero  of  every  young  man  who 
knows  adversity,  who  struggled  to  overcome  the  trials  and 
tribulations  of  the  ages,  a  work  in  which  not  only  the  whole 
world  is  interested — but  in  which  generations  yet  unborn  will 
find  guidance  and  solace  and  strength  to  do  right?  Why  thus 
discriminate  against  the  savior  of  the  Union  and  the  preserver 
of  our  heritage?  A  Congressional  appropriation  by  Congress 
of  $100,000  would  start  the  work  with  such  momentum  as  to 
bring  it  to  a  successful  completion  within  ten  years. 

Is  it  not  time  that  this  work  be  begun  now  ?  Must  it  wait  for 
a  day  when  the  paper  writings  will  fade,  when  the  letters  will 
be  lost,  when  the  newspaper  pages  will  fall  apart,  as  they  are 
now  doing — and  the  volumes  lost  and  mislaid?  Must  we  wait 
for  a  time  when  rumor  and  surmise,  guess  and  suggestions 
will  be  the  only  methods  of  writing  a  definitive  life  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  and  the  false  charges  and  impressions  become  ossified  ? 
Is  this  but  a  repetition  of  the  shameful  treatment  received  by 


his  grief  stricken  wife  when  begging  for  a  pension  ?  Is  Lincoln 
ever  really  to  come  into  his  own?  Will  he  ever  stop  to  hide 
and  repress  his  utterances  by  voice  and  pen?  Will  the  sons 
of  War  governors  and  War  senators  and  cabinet  members 
ever  release  those  treasures?  Or  are  they  hiding  some  much 
deserved  reproof  from  the  patient  man  in  the  White  House? 

Isaac  Markens  was  one  of  the  men  who  started  this  work 
in  his  own  modest,  unostentatious,  quiet  way  and  his  life  work 
is  a  reminder  to  us  of  the  duty  we  owe  in  bringing  together  in 
one  common  fund,  in  one  common  place,  accesible  to  all,  of  all 
that  remains  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  this  land, 
of  the  utterances,  the  opinions,  the  heart  throbs,  as  confided  by 
the  pen  of  that  immortal  soul,  to  paper  or  parchment,  where- 
from  shall  appear  the  majestic  proportions  of  the  man  of  the 
ages — Abraham  Lincoln  ! 


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